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The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton - Book Review


I feel like I’ve just played a game of Cluedo while experiencing some form of mind-altering substance*. There’s some weird stuff going on in this book and I loved it!

Author Stuart Turton describes The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle** as a “time-travel, body-hopping, murder mystery novel”. It has been likened to Agatha Christie meets Gosford Park meets Inception meets Black Mirror meets Groundhog Day. What a combination!

This is a refreshingly original murder mystery with a clever and intricate plot. I had no idea what was going to happen from one page to the next and it kept me guessing to the end.

Concentration is required to keep up with the time changes and body-shifting, and it’s helpful if you can read it in large chunks.

Have you read The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle? I’d love to know what you think. Happy reading!

*Disclaimer: I have never played Cluedo in the presence of a mind-altering substance. But if I did, I imagine the experience would be similar to reading this book.

**Interesting side note: In the US, this book has been released with the title The 7.5 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. The additional 0.5 is to avoid confusion with a similarly named (but completely different) book released last year, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. An odd coincidence! 

Synopsis from Bloomsbury Publishing: We have work to do,' he says. 'I have a puzzle which requires a solution.'

'I think you've mistaken me for someone else,' I say. 'I'm just a doctor.'

'You were a doctor,' he says. 'Then a butler, today a playboy, tomorrow a banker. None of them are your real face, or your real personality. Those were stripped from you when you entered Blackheath and they won't be returned until you leave.'

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden can identify her killer.

But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different person. And some hosts are more helpful than others...

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